Skinny Bitch

Last month my mother began telling me about the book, Skinny Bitch. She actually didn't tell me that much about its contents, but she insisted that I read the book. She lent me her copy which I began reading on my plane ride home from Vegas. I just assumed it was another diet book. My mother likes to read all these things and then pronounce that "this diet" is her "new thing!"

So, I started reading the book, and it was okay. It talks about "healthy eating," which is always something I'm into reading about. Then I started reading the chapter on artificial sweeteners. As soon as I began to read it I realized why my mom wanted me to read this book. She is so anti-artificial sweeteners, it's ridiculous! She comments all the time about diet pop (I've been known to drink quite a few on a daily basis) and how I should just drink regular pop. She also likes to refer to sugar-free gum as "poison gum." She could talk 'til she's blue in the face about artificial sweeteners being bad for me, causing cancer, etc., but I never paid attention. However, when I started reading about it in Skinny Bitch, I couldn't believe it. Aspartame really is the devil and Splenda isn't much better. I'm not going to go into details, 'cause it would take a long while, but I recommend reading up on it. So, I woke up the next day and stopped eating artificial sweeteners. No more Splenda in my coffee (no coffee at all actually, I've moved on to herbal tea). No more diet Pepsi, diet Coke, Coke Zero, Propel, Sugar-free Red Bull, etc. No more Weight Watchers treats (all made with sucralose) or even Weight Watchers yogurt. I stopped it all. Crazy. It wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be!

The book also taught me a bit about the meat industry, organic stuff, going vegan, etc. Now, I never will be, and don't desire to ever be vegan, but the book definitely raised many interesting points. It's kind of a one sided book, so I don't recommend it to anyone who wants a really educated point of view. I think it was a pretty good jumping off point for me though. Next on my lost is The Omnivores Dilemma. Like I said, I really don't intend on ever being a vegetarian, but I'm willing to have some substitutes and am looking for alternatives. Peter and I even made some tofu tacos last week! They were actually good! Surprise, surprise!

My New Favorite Website

Peter randomly found this website a few weeks ago. I needed to share 'cause it's my new favorite place to kill time.

http://www.zooborns.com/

Ending an Era

I've decided to delete my myspace page! I feel it's time to let go of it! Soon facebook will disappear as well, but for now I'll just delete the myspace! The only reason I think I held onto it for so long is my blog that I had on myspace. I didn't realize how much I wrote on it. From Leigh Ann & Jenny getting married, to the October storm, my horrible poison ivy, to the Justin Timberlake concert, they were all documented on that blog! I just spent a while reading it one last time before deleting it & I decided that there are a few blogs that I will copy over to here because they're important to me... for some reason....

This one's a classic:

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Evil Kitty

Current mood: awake

Category: Pets and Animals

It started out as a lovely Sunday afternoon. Peter and I were planning stuff to do since the football season had come to a close (FYI: I won $114 in the playoff fantasy league I was in ). Peter decided that we'd go shopping 'cause he needed clothes (he shops maybe once a year, so who am I to stop him!). So, we go shopping for a while and wind up back at my apartment at 3:30pm with nothing more to do. Peter decides we should take Muffin to Petsmart. Now, I always mentioned doing this, but Muffin can be a bit unpredictable lately, and she hasn't been on her harness since it's gotten cold, so I'm a little apprehensive. In the end, we decide to take her.

So, we head out in the freezing cold to Petsmart on the boulevard. As I carry Muffin in she begins to shake uncontrollably. Aparently she's a little overstimulated! I put her down and she goes right under the shelves. I pick her up and she just looks like a paranoid drug addict. I show her the fish and she couldn't care less. I show her the birds and she's slightly intrigued. She'd be more interested I'm sure it there weren't dogs roaming around. So, Peter and I decide to take her to a quieter section of the store. We go over by the cat stuff and she falls in love with those carpeted cat climber things (ya know, like big scratching posts, with little holes to go into). It's like a field of them and she's up high and so she's happy. Now, Peter and I are getting a little bored. After she spends about 15 minutes in these things we show her some more stuff and then decide it's time to check out.

We head up to the registers and on our way pass 3 cats in cages that are up for adoption. Muffin doesn't like other cats, so I hope she's not really paying attention. Well, these ladies who are with the adoption place start asking questions about Muffin and want to pet her and stuff. I'm not too comfortable with this whole situation, and aparently Muffin isn't either. One of the ladies goes to pet her belly and that's all Muffin needs to FLIP OUT ! She starts screaching like a little kid, bites my wrist repeatedly, and attempts to wrestle herself out of my arms! It was like I was being mauled by a wild animal. I start to walk over to the door and just throw Muffin on the ground. Some worker comes up to me and says, "Honey, she's scared. I think you need to take her out of here." I wanted to say, "No f*#@!n' kidding you stupid b*$#h!!!" Instead I scooped Muffin up and headed out to the car. Peter was right behind me. He put down the things we planned on purchasing 'cause he had the car keys. We get to the car and he was gonna go back into the store and buy what he had put down, but I told him, "We can never go into Petsmart again!!!" We drive off and I never look back. After this whole incident I felt like a mother whose child throws a temper tantrum in the store. I was so embarassed!

I look at my hand which is red and scratched and punctured with teeth marks. It's bleeding and hurts quite bad for the rest of the day. I am currently on Augmentin to avoid cellulitis. (I've done some research and I guess like 50% of cat bites become infected! Great!)

I threatened to send Muffin away to live with her father, but we're getting along a bit better now. It'll take some time to repair our relationship, but I'm sure it (and my hand) will recover just fine.

Just because….

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Letting Go

Current mood: relieved

Do you dig my new picture and background? Keep in mind that I have no internet at home, so I do all of this crap at work!

So, I read this article in one of my many, many magazines today. It was called something like, "When you lose a friend," or something like that (No, this is not about death or funerals, so don't worry!). So, I read this article about this girl who had a friend that all of a sudden seemed to fall off the face of the earth. She stopped returning calls, e-mail, letters, etc. She thought that maybe she had been in a horrible accident or something tragic had happened in her family, etc. In the end she realizes that her friend just cut her off for some unknown reason and she just needs to stop questioning everything she had ever done. She had to accept that she would never know what had been going through her "friend's" mind.

This article struck a cord (chord? you know what I mean) with me. It made me feel not alone it a similar situation I experienced. Most of you know that I had a best friend in college, let's call him "Mike," that I spent most of my waking hours with. For four years he was my surrogate boyfriend and I his surrogate girlfriend. He had an actual girlfriend miles away and I, despite my lovesick tendencies, wasn't ready to settle down and have an actual relationship. So, we looked to eachother to have someone to hang out with. Movies, bars, dinners, and lots of other random stuff. So many people thought we were dating or we would inevitabley wind up dating, but we both knew how ridiculous that was. The idea never even entered into our minds. That just wasn't us.

So, we go on the leave Canisius and I stay in Buffalo to go to UB and he moves to Philly for school. We talk occassionally and I even go out for a visit for spring break that first year. Then, the phone calls and e-mails began to trail off. He stopped returning my phone calls and the e-mails were few and far between. I sent him birthday and Christmas cards and eventually he stopped acknowleding them. He even visited Buffalo several times (I only heard that through the grapevine) and never even tried to meet up me. So, I gave up on him, at least until one drunken night when I became nostalgic and decided to e-mail him. I asked him if he had ever really cared at all. I asked if he ever wanted to be my friend, or if I was just someone to fill in an empty space for a short period of time. (I'm sure it sounded more dramatic, but that's the jist of things.) Much to my surprise he replied within 24 hours. He told me that he decided to focus his attention on the people in his life that really cared about him and that I shouldn't take it personally (That's honestly what he said.). Then, the kicker followed. He wrote in a "PS" that he was married and expecting his first child in a two months. I think I blacked out at that moment. That hurt more than anything I could have ever been prepared for. I hated him for a long time.

I found out a few weeks ago that he's not married. WTF? That's when I decided I needed to let go.

Since then, I stopped trying to figure him out. I stopped trying to pinpoint the moment we stopped being friends. I stopped trying to figure out if we ever even friends at all. I stopped trying to convince myself that being with him wasn't a waste of time. I tried to stop caring.

In conclusion, the article I read today made me feel better in a way.... Of course, it made me write this blog on my feelings, but I think I've come to terms with the whole experience. Why should I waste my energy? It's been long enough...time to move on.